The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Traditionally, vehicles include multiple systems that regulate overall operation of the vehicle. For example, the vehicle includes a power plant (e.g., an internal combustion engine and/or an electric machine) that generates drive torque, an energy storage device (e.g., battery pack) that provides electrical energy, a transmission that distributes the drive torque to drive wheels and various other systems.
Each of the systems includes an associated control modules or modules that communicate with one another to regulate operation of the vehicle. For example, operation of a hybrid transmission (i.e., a transmission including at least one electric machine for providing drive torque and regenerative braking) is regulated using a hybrid control module and a transmission control module. It is important that each of the control modules is properly functioning to ensure proper operation of the hybrid transmission.
Control module failures (e.g., a software failure, RAM and/or ROM corruption, and/or an arithmetic and logic unit (ALU) failure) can be protected against by having a secondary path of calculation for a security-critical variable using a seed and key, or a duplicate path in a separate control module can be implemented. These security methods have to be specifically designed for the particular feature which is identified as a security-critical feature. Furthermore, these security methods increase the complexity, and thus the cost of the individual control modules.